In 2010, former president of the World Bank Robert Zoellick announced that the Third World was passé: “If 1989 saw the end of the ‘Second World’ with Communism’s demise, then 2009 saw the end of what was known as the ‘Third World’.” He was arguing that the way we address poverty, the roles of donor and supplicant, and the way the world deals with failed states must change. At the same time, hopeful discussions about Africa’s burgeoning middle class were on the rise. In fact, that same year, the African Development Bank estimated that the middle class had increased to 34% of the African population.
But this talk about “Africa Rising” is vastly overhyped. A Standard Bank survey of 11 sub-Saharan African countries, which together account for about half of Africa’s gross domestic product, found that 86% of their households remain in the low-income band.
Indeed, Ricardo Gomez noted that in 1992, one-fifth of the world’s wealthiest population received 82.7% of the total world income. Oxfam revealed that by 2014 the richest 85 people across the globe shared a combined wealth of £1 trillion, as much as the poorest 3.5 billion of the world's population. In addition, the wealth of the richest 1% amounts to $110tn (£60.88tn), or 65 times as much as the poorest half of the world. On top of that, the UNDP consistently reports on the rise of poverty within countries in the global South.
